About Us

Career Opportunities

The Cleveland Sight Center recognizes that its most valuable resource is the human resource--its staff and working clients. We are committed to attracting and retaining knowledgeable and dedicated staff necessary to maintain our accreditation and standards of excellence.

The Human Resources Department supports a dynamic and diverse workforce, one that focuses on our mission of helping people who are blind or visually impaired. Please feel free to review any open positions below that might fit your qualifications. We look forward to hearing from you and serving your employment needs.

For more information or to apply for an open position, click the appropriate link above or contact our Human Resources Department at 216-791-8118 or toll free 877-776-9563.

Partners for Life

Since 1906 Cleveland Sight Center has provided rehabilitation services for all northeast Ohio residents of any age who are blind or visually impaired. In many American cities, several local agencies offer limited services to selected age groups. In Cleveland, our clients are partners for life.

To this rare organizational structure, add an unusual summer setting. Since 1926, individuals who sought our help have taken great strides towards independence at Highbrook Lodge, a forested enclave east of Cleveland, one of three camps in America specially designed for persons with functional vision impairments. No one leaves Highbrook without knowing nature’s beauty and sensing life’s opportunities.

Enemies of Vision Loss

Our organizational structure and unique setting have nurtured pioneers who tried to prevent blindness or minimize its impact, for which the causes change, but never disappear. Eighty-five years ago, our nurses used an ancient medication – silver nitrate – that eliminated inflammation that blinded newborns. Twenty-five years later, we were confronted with incubators that saved a premature baby’s life, but destroyed its vision.

In 1944, surgeons began replacing opaque corneas with transplants and eye banks were created. A decade later cataracts could be replaced with artificial lenses. In the 1980s, wet and dry degeneration of the macula rob the sight of older persons on an epidemic scale.
The enemies of eyesight are relentless.

Historic Pioneers

Yet, so are those – both blind and sighted – who offer help. In 1907, a blind Harvard graduate employed by the Cleveland Society for the Blind, the Cleveland Sight Center’s predecessor, proved visually impaired children could succeed in public schools, a half-century before “mainstreaming” became an educational buzzword.

In the 1980s, a blind 50-year-old broadcasting executive showed us how digital technology was changing the way he communicated, then he financed one of the nation’s first centers to provide those benefits to others with similar impairments.

These achievements were made with minimal public resources. Our founders and their successors realized that if prevention and rehabilitation efforts were to succeed, they would have to be supported by substantial private funds. The result is an endowment that defrays the costs of services others communities cannot afford.

A Second Century of Innovation

In November 2008, Cleveland Sight Center’s Board of Trustees asked Steven M. Friedman, Ph.D., to build on the agency’s tradition of innovation and improve and increase our services for the 21st Century. In two short years, Dr. Friedman and our 100-member professional staff have fulfilled the Board’s request in ways it had not imagined possible. One notable example is how we provide vocational services.

In 2010, Cleveland Sight Center adopted an evidence-based model for vocational services called “Supported Employment.” What sets our program apart from others are the number of services and the speed with which they’re delivered. Our exceptional vocational services led InfoCision Management Corporation, one of the nation’s leading teleservices companies, to designate Cleveland Sight Center as a “preferred recruitment source.”

At the same time, we have increased the number of people served in all age groups and supported that effort with larger amounts of public funds. More important for the future, under Dr. Friedman’s leadership the agency has raised 80% of the funds required to renovate our sixty-year old headquarters in Cleveland’s University Circle, which will transform the delivery of our services.

Affirmation of Excellence

From 1968 to 1982, Cleveland Sight Center’s excellence was recognized by accreditation from the National Accreditation Council; since then we have met the highest standards of the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), a national, independent, nonprofit accrediting body.

In 2006, we were the first non-profit agency to satisfy the more stringent accreditation standards for comprehensive blind rehabilitation services. In 2008, Cleveland Sight Center was awarded one of the first Vocational Rehabilitation Public & Private Partnership grants from the Rehabilitation Services Commission. We currently operate four of these partnership grants - the most of any agency in the state.

How Can We Help

If you wish to become a client, please click Make an Appointment; if you want to talk to a professional staff member, click here for a listing of our staff. For directions to our University Circle headquarters and Highbrook Camp click Directions/Maps. To refer a patient, family member or yourself to Cleveland Sight Center Click on Make a Referral to begin the process.

Governance

A seventy-member Board of Trustees governs the Cleveland Sight Center and meets quarterly; its smaller Executive Committee meets bimonthly. Past board chairman remain active through the Advisory Council. Life Trustees are individuals who have provided exceptional service. Officers for 2014 to 2015 include:

Your Rights as a Client: Cleveland Sight Center has been serving the needs of people who are blind or visually impaired for more than 100 years. We always put people first. We respect you as a person - we respect you as a client

As a client of Cleveland Sight Center, you always have the right to:

Be assured that all information pertaining to your personal records is confidential, and is available ONLY to those who need to know in order to assist you

Request and receive access to any and all information in your personal record

Contact and speak with your case manager about any issue

Just as we respect your rights, we also accept our responsibilities to:

Assess your vision needs

Recommend individualized skill building programs

Suggest ways we believe will improve your abilities and lead
you to greater independence

Your lifelong knowledge of yourself and our century of experience form the basis of a partnership that empowers you, our agency and our community.